Perhaps most of us call ourselves Anglo-Saxon, but we are in reality somewhat different even in physical respects from the Englishmen of Queen Elizabeth’s time, who alone deserved the name Anglo-Saxon.  This very term indicates an evolution of a type that differs from both the Angles and the early Saxons of King Alfred’s age.  These are simple examples which illustrate many features of the universal history of human races wherever they are to be found.  Even in the comparatively peaceful times of our modern era the history of any race is a veritable turmoil of constant changes; conquerors impress their characters upon the vanquished, while the victors often adopt some of the features of the conquered.  Colonies split off from the mother nation to follow out their destinies under other conditions.  Nowhere does the naturalist find evidence of long-established permanence, or an unentwined course of an uninterrupted and unmodified line of racial descent.

It is the task of the student of human evolution to unravel the tangled threads of human histories.  The task is relatively simple when it is concerned with recent times where the aid of written history may be summoned but when the events of remote and prehistoric ages are to be placed in order, the difficulties seem well-nigh insuperable.  All is not known, nor can it ever be known; but wherever facts can be established, science can deal with them.  By a study of the present races of mankind, much of their earlier history can be worked out, for their genetic relations may be determined by employing the principle that likeness means consanguinity.  Let us suppose an alien visitor to reach our planet from somewhere else; if he were endowed with only ordinary human common-sense, he would very soon ascertain the common origin of the English-speaking people in Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, and many other places.  Even if he could not understand a word of the English language, he would be justified in regarding them all as the descendants of common ancestors because they agree in so many physical qualities.  The anthropologist works according to the same common-sense principle, obtaining results that find no explanation other than evolution when the varying characters that are used to determine social relationship are properly classified and related.  It is to these characters that we must now give some attention.

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The average stature of adults varies in different races from four feet one inch in certain blacks to nearly six feet and seven inches, as among the Patagonians.  These are the extreme values for normal averages, although dwarfs only fifteen inches high have been known, while “giants” sometimes occur with a height of nine feet and five inches.  Such individuals are of course rare and abnormal, and are not to be taken into account in establishing the average stature of a race for use in comparison with that of another group.